Monday, December 27, 2010

David Graham was born in 1952 in Abington, Pennsylvania. He received a BA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and his MFA in Photography from the Tyler School of Art. He has taught at Moore College of Art and is currently on the faculty at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Graham has published several books of his work including Taking Liberties, Ay, Cuba!, Alone Together, as well as American Beauty and Land of the Free, which were published by Aperture, and most recently Almost Paradise published by Pond Press. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Tirelessly traveling the United States, Graham captures the colorful, sometimes surreal, and often bizarre, in the thoroughly American landscape. You can visit his personal website here.

Margaret Bourke-White, Moscow 1941Locomotive named Stalin is studied by students at the Locomotive Laboratory of the Technical Institute as top instructors (L) wearing enameled red decorative pins, lecture on its mechanics.

Erró – Point to the East, Point to the West

Charles L. Goeller, Third Avenue, 1934

Philip Evergood, Nude By The El, 1933

William Turner, Rain, steam and speed, 1844

ON THE PROJECTED KENDAL AND WINDERMERE RAILWAY
by William Wordsworth (1844)

IS then no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown
In youth, and 'mid the busy world kept pure
As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,
Must perish;--how can they this blight endure?
And must he too the ruthless change bemoan
Who scorns a false utilitarian lure
'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?
Baffle the threat, bright Scene, from Orresthead
Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance: 10
Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance
Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead,
Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong
And constant voice, protest against the wrong.

Augustus Egg, Travelling Companions, 1862

From a Railway Carriage
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!

October 23, 1895 – Gare Montparnasse, Paris, France: a local train overruns a buffer stop due to Westinghouse air brake failure and crosses more than 30 metres of concourse before plummeting through a window. One person in a shop below was crushed by the falling engine.
List of train accidents:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_(pre-1950)

Chinese Photographer, First train passing through the wall of Peking, China, c.1900